


We only do it for the scars and stories

by MarauderCracker



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: M/M, somewhat canon compliant, vague descriptions of wounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-27
Updated: 2017-10-27
Packaged: 2019-01-23 20:58:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12516444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarauderCracker/pseuds/MarauderCracker
Summary: It’s one of those things you do when you’ve just come back from the dead and then recruited a former enemy to spend three weeks trying to rescue an artifact that will keep you from being erased from the very fabric of reality. You carry each other’s weight.





	We only do it for the scars and stories

"Team Vibe coming through!" Cisco yells into the crook of his elbow, trying to cover his face from the pieces of glass flying everywhere. They land with a loud thud and the clinking noise of tiny glass pieces falling on the floor, and the portal closes over their heads. The hard fall against the lab floor knocks the air out of their lungs, and Snart takes a second to let go of his waist. Startled by their dramatic entrance, Linda and Wally jump off of the desk they were sitting on, but it looks like they’re more worried about getting caught making out than they are about Cisco. To be fair, Cisco opening portals in the middle of the lab is almost a daily occurrence by now.

"Isn’t this guy dead?" Linda asks, fixing up her hair. Cisco tries to look at them from the floor, then pushes Snart away and stumbles into a standing position. He pushes the hair off his eyes, and brushing his face realizes that he’s got more than a little scruff on his face. He fucking hates time-travel.

"Oh, my God, I knew you two were together!” Cisco exclaims, when he finally manages to stand upright and focus on Wally and Linda. Wally nervously scratches his head, and Cisco decides to do something smarter than just teasing him. He takes a small bag from the inner pocket of his jacket and hands it to Wally. “This is a very powerful magical artifact, and I won’t tell Iris that her brother is making out with her ex only as long as you promise to take it to the vault under the particle accelerator,” he says, grinning, and starts pulling off his gloves. Linda quickly takes the bag and grabs Wally’s hand, more than happy to leave them here and go make out elsewhere. Snart just stays on the floor, groaning.

"Come on, old man, I'll stitch you up," Cisco says, and extends a hand so he can pull him up to his feet.

 

Snart has to lean his weight on him and limp, because he's been shot on his left thigh. He's careful not to touch the burn on Cisco’s side, from where he’d scraped against the asphalt; or come near the cut on Cisco’s cheek when Snart brushes the strands of hair that fall on his face. It’s one of those things you do when you’ve just come back from the dead and then recruited a former enemy to spend three weeks trying to rescue an artifact that will keep you from being erased from the very fabric of reality. You carry each other’s weight.

They make their way into Cisco’s workshop because it’s much closer than the medbay, and Cisco already dreads the bloodstains he will have to wash off the floor. Or the table, maybe, because it’s where Snart sits. On top of one of Cisco’s blueprints, one muddy boot on Cisco’s chair, bleeding.

Cisco curses and groans when he sees that the first aid kit is under a pile of books in a corner. He received a few hits and the cut on his thigh will leave a scar, but he can move. He just doesn’t want to. Still, he’s the one in best shape here.

"What was that joke you made about the silver dagger?" Snart asks, grinning down at him when Cisco walks up to the table with the black box that contains the kit. Cisco grabs a wire-cutter to start ripping at the fabric of Snart’s pants, doesn’t dignify him with a reply. "Come on, it was hilarious," he jokes, as Cisco grabs a different pair of pincers and takes it to the wound with the certainty of someone who has had to emergency-operate without a medical degree more than once. Snart tries to continue mocking him, but his voice becomes strained and his face becomes utterly rigid from pain.

“Don’t worry, this can’t be worse than dying,” Snart whispers, each word tortuously pushing through his teeth. Cisco tries to focus on the movement of his hands, thinks of disassembling Snart’s cold gun. He takes a deep breath before pulling the bullet out.

Snart muffles a scream against Cisco’s shoulder as the bullet falls into an empty coffee mug. Cisco doesn’t push him away.  He keeps his eyes on the wound, reaches for disinfectant, efficiently wipes the blood away. Snart's tense against Cisco for a second, muscles bunched up and jaw locked until the wound stops burning and he can relax, let Cisco apply a gel over the burned and bleeding flesh, whisper a sigh of relief into Cisco’s shoulder when the local anesthetic starts kicking in.

Cisco pulls away, though, and Snart almost tries to follow the movement. Because that’s something you do, when you spend weeks with your life hanging on a maybe-ally’s hands. You follow the movement.

Cisco doesn’t meet Snart’s eyes, concentrating on fitting a near-invisible thread in the eye of a sharp needle, but his eyes are unfocused. He just portaled them through two universes and a hundred and seventy-five years, and maybe his brain is a little fried. After a second of hesitation, he grabs Snart’s hands.

“I need you to do this, because I can’t see shit,” is Cisco’s entire explanation. He drops the disinfectant and latex gloves on Snart’s palms and stumbles off the table, crumbles onto the second chair. It rolls backwards a little when Cisco throws all of his weight against it, but he manages not to fall. Instead, he closes his eyes for a second and tries not to pass the fuck out.

“Do you expect me to actually stitch myself up?” Snart drawls. Snart’s speaking voice is Cisco’s second least favorite speaking voice, after Harry’s. Cisco opens his eyes to check if he can see again, but the ceiling is a blur.

“No, gimme a second. I’m having a stroke here.”

Snart laughs, and then quickly shuts up. Cisco opens his eyes again and sees that the ceiling is finally starting to become clearer.

“Are you actually having a stroke, Ramón?”

“Fuck off. I hadn’t actually time-traveled this much before.”

More like at all, because he didn’t know he could time-travel until Snart’s faulty beacon had reached out to him across the multiverse and decided to pull him into a three-day-long time-loop in the summer of 1932. Finally, Cisco feels steady enough to stand-up, and finds that Snart is looking at him with something like worry.

He walks up to the table, grabs a new pair of gloves and accepts the needle from Snart. The man doesn’t seem to feel the needle when Cisco stitches the bullet-wound closed.

 

Cisco sits on the table now, trying not to bleed (any more) on his work, and lets Snart help him out of the shreds of his clothes. "This is why I built myself a super-suit" he comments, keeping a straight face while Snart cleans the dirt, asphalt and glass from his ribs. “I really liked this shirt," he continues, tries to smile but just only achieves a pained grimace.

"I really liked these pants," Snart replies, eyeing the missing square on his thigh, then applies disinfectant and smiles apologetically when Cisco winces. Cisco swallows hard, nearly knocks a screwdriver off the table when his body twitches in pain. It makes Snart laugh, and Snart's laughter makes Cisco laugh too. He waits patiently until Cisco stills again before moving to clean the cut on his cheekbone.

He's carefully spreading the healing gel over the wound with a cotton swab, and Cisco won't stop staring at him. There is the smallest hint of a smile on his lips, and Snart just knows that Cisco's about to make one of his sarcastic little remarks. "Hey, Snart," he starts, softly, and stops. Snart wants to roll his eyes, but plays along. "What happened, Ramón?"

"Never ask me to save your ass again," he says, his smile getting wider, and Snart just has to kiss him. It's what you do, when your almost-friend grins at you like this. You kiss them.

Snart's mouth tastes a lot like blood and a little like the coffee they were having just before they started getting shot at. Cisco is used to the metallic taste, knows that the small, choked up whimper Snart lets out when Cisco licks his split upper lip is only half from pain. He drops the tube of gel on the floor and tangles his hands in Cisco's messy hair, gasps when he sucks on the tip of his tongue and kisses him deeper, licking the roof of Snart’s mouth.

Cisco tugs at the bottom of Snart's shirt until Snart catches up and lets go of him long enough to take it off. He's got a few more bruises and scratches on his arms and torso, but nothing worse than usual. Definitely not worse than the huge purple-green bruise on Cisco's shoulder. For some reason, Cisco feels relieved that Snart isn't more hurt.

Cisco fumbles with the holster around Snart’s hip and thigh, and Snart chuckles into his neck before softly pushing his hands away. "I just stitched your thigh, I can do it myself," Cisco jokes, but doesn't protest when Snart drops the holster on the chair and starts on Cisco's belt. Cisco sticks his tongue out at him and Snart leans forward, trying to bite him. Cisco pushes Snart away, but his groan and pained expression make him quickly pull his hand away.

"I'm okay, I'm okay," Snart mutters, smiling with just a little of effort. Cisco hesitates, and Snart moves closer to him. "I'm okay, Cisco," he insists, breathing against his mouth, before kissing him. The name sounds oddly familiar in his mouth.

"You look horrible, but that might be the being dead part," Cisco jokes, and Snart looks theatrically offended. Cisco rolls his eyes so hard they look almost blank for a second, but still steps off the table so he can push his pants off. Snart grins, kisses him again and pushes him back up on the table before Cisco actually manages to get them down his thighs.

Snart bites on Cisco's bottom lip and reaches a hand around his chest, pressing between his shoulder blades. Cisco grabs onto Snart’s biceps so he won't lose his balance, perched precariously as he is on the edge of the table, and digs his fingers into the muscle when Snart grabs the hair at the base of Cisco's scalp and pulls.

Cisco is impatient and antsy, even when he's dead tired and every movement hurts a little. Snart moves slower, gets distracted with the details, like the freckles on Cisco’s shoulders or a new scar on his arm. He can be faster, rough and determined, but that side of him usually comes accompanied by violence. It makes  Cisco itch, wanting him somewhere and finding that instead he'll get distracted kissing a bruise under his jaw or making jokes about his hair. Because that’s a thing you do, when you jump off a twenty-store building trusting entirely that the guy next to you can open a portal fast enough to keep you from cracking your skull open on a sidewalk. You take things a little slower, you rejoice on being alive.

Snart pulls at his hair again, tilts Cisco’s head so he can kiss his neck freely. Cisco tries and fails to focus on the ceiling (it’s not another brain-glitch, he just can’t focus when Snart drags his teeth down his throat). He reaches for Snart’s pants, starts pushing them down as much as he can without forcing the man to stop kissing him.

"Come on, Snart," he mutters, threatening the table’s balance when he puts more of his weight on it, so he can lock his ankles behind Snart's legs and press their hips together. Snart lets out a shuddering breath against his neck, thrusts up against him.

Cisco grins and follows the movement, tilts up his chin, and Snart runs his tongue up his jawline, kisses the scar below his ear. Cisco shivers, grinds against Snart’s pelvis as best as he can with his jeans in the middle. It's not enough, though. He needs them to lose the clothes before he gets tangled on the pants and the table tips over.  

It takes talent to get undressed when they're so close together, but Cisco is a talented guy, and he manages to kick off his sneakers and, a second later, Snart’s pants without making them both lose their balance. But there’s no engineering feat that will allow him to take off his own pants while straddling the other man. Snart moves to kiss down his chest, slow and careful not to brush the cuts and scratches from the time wraith that had been following Snart for most of the last week. Cisco huffs and tells him to hurry the fuck up. Snart looks up at him, smiles.

He pushes Snart off (more careful this time, far away from any of the visible wounds) and stands off the table, grins with amusement when Snart has to untie his boots to get them off. Cisco fishes for what’s left of his jacket, pulls his wallet out of it. He laughs at Snart, thinks that he’s really glad that the beacon called him when he was at the grocery store and not while he was sleeping. Or worse, showering. That would’ve been bad.

Snart taps his fingers on Cisco’s hip, impatient, and Cisco realizes that his thoughts had ran away from him. Snart is right here, a faint smirk on his lips, palms on Cisco’s hipbones. Cisco kicks off his pants, without pushing Snart away this time.

“Snart,” he starts, thinking of the condom in his wallet. The man snorts.

“I owe you my life. You can call me Len.”

And then Cisco doesn’t get to say anything, because Snart--Len? Len kisses him quick and dirty and drops to his knees, pushes him a little too harshly against the edge of the table and digs his fingers into Cisco’s thighs. He kisses up the inside of Cisco’s left thigh, much slower than the kisses on his neck, and Cisco knows it's on purpose but doesn't tell him to speed it up just yet.

Cisco can never keep his mind from drifting off during sex, not if he isn’t doing anything, and the only thing he can do at this moment is hold onto the edge of the table and hope that his vision is unfocused because of the pain-pleasure and not because he’s about to pass out. He thinks that this is what you do. When the man who kidnapped your brother and nearly killed you on at least three different occasions asks you to save his life, you do it. Because the guy has been a super-villain and a (sort of) super-hero and died and come back to life and you have to assume that he changed. So you save his life, maybe die trying, fall in love in the meantime.

Len keeps his fingers safely away from the bandage on Cisco’s thigh, runs his palms up Cisco’s abdomen and down to brush his fingers against the back of his knees, puts his mouth anywhere but on Cisco’s hard-on. And Cisco twists and twitches and digs his fingers into the table until his knuckles are nearly white. He barely makes a noise, but the shallowness of his breathing and the involuntary little thrusts of hips are loud as sirens.

Cisco manages to put the ceiling into focus and finally looks down, watches Len’s eyelashes as the man places a soft kiss just above Cisco’s bellybutton. Len opens his eyes and his hands go still on Cisco’s lower back. For a second, Cisco thinks Len’s going to say something, but he doesn’t. He sucks a mark on Cisco’s skin instead, just above the waistband of his boxers. Cisco tries to control his breathing, twitches just a little, runs his nails through the coarse hair on Len’s nape.

Len grabs Cisco’s ass through the cotton of his boxers and mouths at his dick over the fabric. The smell of disinfectant and blood is suddenly replaced by the sharp tang of the chemical wash they got in 2046, which Cisco had described as “concentrated hospital smell”.

“Get these off,” Len urges, tugging at the waistband, when he hears the clear clicking of heels coming from behind Cisco. Cisco hears it too, and he twists his neck around fast enough that he might actually pull a muscle. There is nowhere close enough to hide, not for Cisco at least. Len presses his forehead against Cisco’s hipbone as Iris’ “oh, my God!” echoes in the lab.

 

Iris West’s carrying a Jitters coffee with Cisco’s name on it, and that means that the world isn’t ending and that Cisco doesn’t have to run into the Cortex naked. She is looking at them from the doorway, eyebrows raised in a shocked, though not necessarily judgmental expression. Cisco doesn't even think of trying to make up an excuse, he just stares back and wonders whether he conjured this up by thinking that he was lucky not to time-travel naked. Iris turns right around and starts making her way down the hall again.

Cisco can hear her snort from the other side of the wall, Len stands up with a pained groan, but Cisco doesn't make fun of him. Instead, he nudges Len’s calf with his ankle to bring him closer again. "Come on, before someone else comes in," he says, grinning up at him, and this time Len does hurry up.


End file.
